Hey, it's Alan, and I just wanted to let you know that you can now listen to the ongoing

history of new music early and ad-free on Amazon music, included with Prime.

One thing before we start the show.

I want to let you know about a special interview you'll hear at the end of this episode.

It's with a host of a brand-new podcast called ArtCatex, the Architects of Art.

The cool thing is this show is hosted by Director X and Tash Critchlow, two of the biggest music video directors on the planet. These guys are

responsible for game-changing videos from artists like Drake and Coldplay and Kendrick Lamar and so many

more. Hope you enjoyed the discussion. I sure did. That's coming up at the end of this episode.

All right, let's get on with things. For the longest time, the sounds of rock were made with

voice, guitars, bass, drums, and keyboards like piano and organ. There were plenty of ways to

manipulate the sounds of those instruments, you know, effects pedals, studio tricks, happy accidents

that happened when you least expected them. And for a couple of decades, that was plenty

to work with. We discovered all sorts of techniques to create sounds that no one had ever heard

before. But when engineers started messing with electricity in new ways, it became possible

for musicians to create sounds that not only we'd never heard before,

but never imagined hearing. This resulted in an explosion of new, amazing music that was based

mostly, if not entirely, on electronic sounds. Experimentation really got underway in the 1960s.

These sounds worked their way into Prague rock in the

1970s. And at the very end of that decade, the technology had become cheap enough for young

musicians in the last months of the original punk rock scene to adopt these music-making machines

as their own. I'm talking about synthesizers, of course. And as bands in sharpsuits and skinny ties

release spiky new wave pop songs, another group of musicians went all in with synths. And in the

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